Congress established our national motto – “In God We Trust” – in 1956, although it first appeared on U.S. coins in 1864. Legal challenges to its constitutionality at the federal level have frequently been brushed aside by federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court.

But no one had ever challenged the constitutionality of state laws requiring the motto’s posting in public schools, which Tennessee and 14 other states have on their books.

Until now. A father of a young girl entering kindergarten at a public charter school in Nashville, Tennessee, objected to the national motto displayed in the entryway of the school and sued. He argued he was bringing up his daughter to be non-religious, and the motto’s presence was a religious statement that violated her constitutional rights.

The good news, however, is United States District Judge Aleta A. Trauger considered and rejected that father’s challenge to Tennessee’s 2018 law, the “National Motto in the Classroom Act.” The law requires local public schools to display the motto in “a prominent location,” defined as “a school entryway, cafeteria, or common area where students are likely to see the national motto display.”

In granting judgment in favor of the school and other state defendants, Trauger first pointed out that the motto has been challenged in other contexts.

A new research report released today – a joint project of the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for Family Studies – demonstrates definitively that the color of your skin does not have to result in a life of poverty in America today.

What if there was a relatively simple secret formula that put anyone’s chances of not living in poverty in the solid 90 percentile without needing a high paying job or college education? It’s called the “Success Sequence” and it nearly guarantees protection from poverty regardless of one’s socio-economic status, family, or racial background. Simply put, the Success Sequence requires three basic steps:

1. Finish high school.
2. Maintain a full-time job once you finish school.
3. Get married before you have children and stay married.

This new report demonstrates how powerful the Success Sequence is for minority young adults seeking to establish productive lives.

First off, 97% of American Millennials who do these three things will not be poor as adults. 97 percent!

But there is even better news. Social scientists explain in this new report, “young adults from disadvantaged circumstances who follow the sequence are markedly more likely to overcome challenges and achieve economic success.” The numbers are quite encouraging.

The U.S. birth rate increased in 2021 for the first time since 2014, the federal government reported on Tuesday.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) reported preliminary data showing that the U.S. birth rate increased 1% in 2021 compared to 2020, the first increase in seven years.

The provisional data showed that there were 3,659,289 births in the U.S. in 2021 – leading the total fertility rate to rise to 1.66 births per woman in 2021, up from 1.64 in 2020.

The “replacement rate,” at which a population replaces itself from one generation to the next without immigration, is 2.1 children per woman in most developed countries.

This means that despite the small increase in the fertility rate last year, the U.S. is still well below the level needed for our population to sustain itself without migration.

Phillip Levine, an economics professor at Wellesley College, told The Wall Street Journal, “This minor blip up still leaves us on a long-term trajectory towards lower births.”

Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk has consistently been raising the alarm about the low fertility rate in recent years.